


you know the way back home

by thewinterapostate



Series: along the road [1]
Category: Firefly, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Setting, Canonical Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2020-10-25 08:21:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20721110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterapostate/pseuds/thewinterapostate
Summary: How Captain Leia Organa found her ship, made it her home and collected her family.





	1. leia - the ship in port

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a Firefly AU. Leia is the Captain of a smuggling ship very much like Serenity, with other characters serving as her crew. Leia, Luke and Han were Browncoats in the war of Independence. This takes place around the same time of the Firefly series. This is essentially the 'Out of Gas' episode, showing how the characters found their way to the ship. Kylo Ren is still the bad guy. Consider this the prequel - the main story is a Poe/Finn epic that will be coming your way in the near future. Title comes from 'Small Hands' by Radical Face, chapter titles also come from Radical Face songs. Will hopefully be updated weekly. Hope you enjoy.

“Look, I’m not saying it’s perfect. It’s...it’s an investment. A fixer upper.”

Leia wasn’t sure that it was possible to inject the amount of disdain she was currently feeling into the glare that she aimed at Han, but that wasn’t going to stop her from trying her gorram hardest.

“It’s a wreck, is what it is.” 

Calling the bucket of bolts and scrap metal that Han had apparently seen fit to invest in without thinking to consult her first was actually an insult to wrecks, but she was too tired and sore to be creative right now. The ship was a hulking old freighter and it was hard to think how something so ugly and ungainly could fly. She ran a hand over the weather worn metal, finding herself warming to the craft without her consent, though she’d let Han see that over her own dead body. 

“I don’t even know what model this is. Is it even worth the credits it would cost to dock it?”

The furtive expression on Han’s face was one that she knew well - the one that said she wouldn’t like the answers to the questions she was asking, and he’d hoped to avoid them entirely. He spread his hands like a used shuttle salesman and his jaw set mulishly.

“It’s a Swan class. Mark three.” At her blank and unimpressed face he sighed and elaborated, “Long distance freighter. Plenty of cargo bay space, and all kinds of interesting little hidey holes. Used to be popular amongst our sort for illegal cargo back before they started developing the Fireflys. Got room for up to eight crew, plus passengers.”

“Han, sweetheart, I’m pretty sure even you would have trouble convincing anyone they want to crew this piece of go se, nevermind actually pay for passage.” Leia snorted, then did a double take as what he’d actually said sank in. “Wait, you’re saying that this is older than the Firefly models? You actually bought a ship older than that junker that Erso can barely afford to keep in the air?” She rubbed a hand over her forehead, feeling the beginnings of a thumping headache coming on. “Ta ma duh! Honestly Han, what possessed you? This has used up practically all of our savings!”

She sat down heavily on the workman’s bench behind her and dropped her head into her hands. After a couple of moments, Han joined her and tentatively put an arm around her shoulders, as if he was afraid that he’d be shrugged off. She didn’t shrug him off. She didn’t have the energy for it.

“I was thinking of you.” He said after a couple of beats of awkward silence, voice unusually raw and vulnerable. “I was thinking of us. We can’t keep going like we are, Leia. Living out of suitcases, working whenever anyone can throw us a bone. We need to settle down. For me and you, and for the baby.” One of his hands came to settle on her belly, smiling faintly when he felt the life inside her squirm.

“And you didn’t think a house might be a better option?” she huffed out with a bark of humorless laughter, but she raised her head and slipped her hand into Han’s and gave it a squeeze.

He raised an eyebrow at her incredulously. “You’re telling me that you’d be able to settle some place? I know you, Leia. If we set up with a farm on some Rim planet like Shara and Kes did, you’d be crawling the walls within a week. And if we’d gone the other way, bought a place on Boros or Sihnon, you think you’d be happy kowtowing to the Alliance?” His arm tightened around her shoulder and he nodded towards the ship in front of them. “Don’t look at what it is now, look at what it could be. This way, we’ve got a home and a business all in one place. It’s freedom. We can go anywhere we want to, make our own work and do it the way we want.”

Leia punched Han gently on the arm and brought her other hand to wipe away the wetness that had started gathering in her eyes. Hormones, that’s what she’d blame it on. She knew that she’d been suckered, but now that she looked back at the ship...well it still looked like shit, but she could start to see it transformed by what Han had said. She’d never admit it to him, but his explanation had made a lot of sense and she was already making mental calculations and plans.

“What about the baby? You think this is really the best place to raise a kid? Always on the move, no other kids around?” Her argument sounded weak, even to her own ears, but she wasn’t quite ready to cede that much ground in the argument, not just yet.

“Are you kidding? I would have killed to grow up like that! He’ll get to see every part of the ‘Verse, learn a couple different trades. He won’t even have time to get bored. Better that than getting his head filled with all kinds of Alliance nonsense in some stuck up school.” Han’s hand ran back and forth over her stomach as he spoke, and from the confidence in his voice, she knew that he knew that he’d won her over. “Soon as we get ‘er running again, you’ll see this ship’s the best decision we ever made.”

Leia rolled her eyes but she leaned into the arm wrapped around her shoulders. She supposed that the idea did have a kind of romantic appeal to it. Her warm glow lasted a grand total of about thirty seconds before she sat bolt upright again.

“Wait, this thing doesn’t even fly?!”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

The ship did not fly. 

Even after Han’s patented quick fix and jerryrigging, which he’d been sure would work, the ship still did not fly. 

They ended up pooling was was left of their savings, along with calling in a few debts, to get the ship hauled to a mechanics yard that specialised in older model freighters. When the ship had been hauled in, the engineer on duty had done a visible double take and exclaimed aloud that he hadn’t thought that there were any of these old Swan classes still knocking around. Leia hadn’t spoken to Han for three days.

It took so long to get it into any kind of functional working order that the ship that was supposed to be the home for them and their child wasn’t even liveable when their child was born. The baby had come a couple of weeks early and the birth had been a torrid, traumatic affair. Even before the doctor had told a sweating and drained Leia and a glowing Han that having anymore children wouldn’t be an option for them, Leia had already made that decision herself. As much as she worried about the baby - a healthy and hefty boy that they’d decided to call Ben - growing up as an only child, especially isolated away from other kids on a ship, it really came down to choosing between him growing up as an only child or growing up without a mother.

It was a bright morning three months after Ben’s birth that Leia found herself standing in the engineer’s workshop staring at the vast hull of the ship again, Ben swaddled to her chest and snoring gently into her neck. While Han dealt with paying the man who’d managed to turn a contraption destined for the scrapyard into something that would theoretically fly, she gazed down at the Cortex pad in her hand, brow furrowed as she regarded the registration form on the screen. Formalities handled, Han wandered over to her and raised an eyebrow at her inaction. She handed the baby over to him and took the pad in both hands. She felt her heart twinge as she glanced at the pair of them in the corner of her eye, Ben looking impossibly small in Han’s arms and Han gazing down at him with an almost impossible amount of adoration in his eyes.

“You all done with that? Rook assures me that we’re ready to fly, and we’ve got cargo waiting,” Han said to her absently as he rocked Ben back and forth in an attempt to lull him back to sleep.

“Almost. Done everything but give her a name.” She’d been looking at the blank ‘Title’ section of the form with some consternation for a good while now, lips pursed and forehead lined. “Did you have anything in mind?”

“No, sweetheart, it’s up to you. Should be the Captain’s choice after all.” Han shrugged. It had been a surprise to Leia when he’d handed her the deeds to the ship and she’d seen her own name emblazoned as the owner and Captain. Han could be surprisingly sweet and thoughtful sometimes for all his bravado, but she’d expected that he would have wanted the title for himself.

Choosing a name for the ship somehow seemed more daunting than picking the baby’s name had been. It felt like setting the name would shape the way that their lives would be going forward, and Leia had spent the best part of two weeks drafting and discarding names. Nothing felt quite right. If had just been transport or a livelihood, she felt that it might have been easier, but this ship was going to be more that. It was going to be their home and that was something much more difficult to settle on.

She froze for a second when it came to her, and she felt her eyes well up in a way that she most assuredly could not blame on the hormones this time. Blinking away the tears, she tapped the name into the box on the screen and hit ‘confirm’ before she could second guess herself. Han ambled up behind her and peered over her shoulder. There was a quick intake of breath when he saw what she’d settled on and his shoulders stiffened before he laid a gentle hand on her elbow.

“You...you’re sure that’s what you want to go with? Isn’t it a little-” He paused, obviously trying to pick his words carefully so as not to upset her or offend her. “-morbid?”

“No.” Leia shook her head, but considered it for a second and shrugged. “Well, maybe a little. I like it though. It’s supposed to be our home, right? And my first home might be gone, but that doesn’t mean it should be forgotten. If we can be half as happy on here as I was there, then we will have done a good job. Does that make sense?”

Han smiled and squeezed her shoulders before he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Yeah it does. I think it’ll grow on me, princess.” He paused and grinned. “Sorry, Captain."

Captain Leia Organa of the Alderaan. She could get used to that.


	2. guilt - luke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia brings a proposition to her brother.

Leia took careful, measured steps, making sure to breathe through her mouth. The reason for her slow movement was a fifty-fifty coin toss - it was either down to her crushing, all consuming hangover or just how gorram sticky the floor was. There had to be a spectacular reason for being anywhere other than her bunk, clutching the pillow and feeling very sorry for herself, at eight am the morning after Unification Day.

She wasn’t quite sure whether this made the cut yet.

The only movement in the Lucky Lizard Cantina at the moment came from the little clouds of flies that circled over sticky puddles of spilled beer on the floor and from the repetitive back and forth of the washcloth clutched in the hand of the sullen teenage girl behind the bar as she rubbed grease and dirt into the countertop more than she cleaned it. She seemed to be doing it more in a sense of obligation than any hope that it might make the place any cleaner. Leia was fairly certain that establishments like this actively repelled any attempt to brighten them up.

As she drew level with the bar, she coughed behind her hand to draw the girls attention, regretting it almost straight away when the spasming of her throat brought up the taste of bile. The girl looked up at her blank eyed, before a spark of recognition seemed to take hold and her jaw clenched. She jerked her chin towards one of the corners of the bar before going back to the task at hand, without a single word passing between them. Leia could appreciate that; she had neither the patience or the spirit for chit chat today.

She picked her way across the room, occasionally skirting around wetness on the floor that she hoped was spilt liquor, but knew that was mostly a pipe dream. Though the bar wasn’t technically open at this early hour, that didn’t mean that it was without clientele. Every third table or so had someone slumped across it snoring, some with drinks still in hand. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a man who was asleep for a reason other than extreme alcohol consumption, if the blossoming bruise and sluggishly bleeding cut on his temple were anything to go by. One of the booths contained two women and a man who actually still seemed to be awake, although barely. They raised their drinks to their mouths as if in slow motion, and the power of speech had long since left them, but they didn’t seem like they were about to stop trying to forget any time soon.

Once upon a time, Leia might have been shocked by a scene like this. Appalled, even. Now it barely even registered. What else would you expect in a bar on Hera after Unification Day.

Hell, a couple of years back, it was likely as not that Leia herself might have taken the place of one of these down and outs. Like pretty much everyone she served under or alongside, there wasn’t much else that used to help her get through Unification Day other than a fight and an industrial quantity of poor quality booze. Having Ben had changed that. So did captaining the Alderaan. She had responsibilities now. She might have overindulged last night to make sure that she could actually sleep, but she’d kept it confined to her office and she hadn’t dragged anyone else into her wallowing.

The same could not be said for her brother…

Luke was slumped across the bench seat of one of the booths at the back of the bar. If his stench and the amount of empty glasses strewn across the table had anything to say about it, he’d consumed enough booze last night to bankrupt a brewery. His eyes were only half lidded, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was awake - she’d seen him asleep open eyed enough in the trenches for it to stop unsettling her by now. Leia gave him a quick once over before she deigned to wake him. His shirt was filthy and torn at the collar, but there were no signs of injury on him. Of course that didn’t mean he hadn’t been involved in any fighting - she would be surprised if he hadn’t. Her brother was as adept at ending fights as he was at starting them.

It had been a good six months since she’d seen Luke. He was a little thinner now, a little more worn looking, and the shadows underneath his eyes were a little deeper. She felt a pang of guilt when she realised how long it had been. The separation had clearly done him no good. It didn’t last long though. It only took the memory of why they’d stayed away from each other for such a length of time to stop it in its tracks. The way Luke was these days, that wasn’t the kind of influence that she could have around her home, her family. Around Ben. Not when he was so young and impressionable.

Heart hardened, she cleared her throat again to try and wake him. Luke twitched in his sleep, but she got no reaction out of him other than that. Leia squinted at him. There was dried drool on his chin. This would take more extreme measures. Lacking the good humour to rouse him gently, she slammed both hands down heavily on the table just in front of his face, rocking back with the motion as her stomach flipped queasily.

For someone who had been dead to the world only moments before, Luke awoke in a flurry. He regarded her blearily, though he wasn’t exactly able to focus. A noise that was halfway between a groan and a shout was forced out of him and he jolted upright. One hand strayed to his hip where, thankfully, it did not find his revolver. It had obviously either been confiscated or lost at some point through the night. 

Leia had forgotten about his fight or fight instincts when he was startled. Perhaps she wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders today either. 

It took a moment or two for recognition to filter into Luke’s eyes as he squinted at her, still strung tight with live wire tension. When he realised who she was, the stiffness left his shoulders and he relaxed a little further backwards into the booth.

“Leia.” 

It came out from him in a grunt, voice thick and hoarse from disuse. It was hardly a tearful, heartfelt reunion of siblings like something out of a holo-drama, but had he reacted like that, Leia would have begun to suspect that something was really wrong.

“You look worse than I feel, and I didn’t think that was possible,” Leia said coolly, pulling a stool out from underneath the table and taking a seat opposite him. She placed her folded hands on the table before pulling them back into her lap almost straight away with a grimace when she felt the sticky, viscous layer of grime that covered it. Honestly, why couldn’t Luke drink himself into trouble somewhere nice for once? She wasn’t even asking for a core world cocktail bar; somewhere with working AC and without a visible coating of filth was all she needed.

“What are you doing here?” Luke didn’t sound amused or like he was in the mood to banter back and forth, like they might have done a few years back. Like they might have done in the war. Mostly, he just sounded tired, and also a little like he didn’t quite believe that she was here. Leia could understand that - if their situations had been reversed, she probably would have been just as disbelieving, figured that she was still drunk too.

There was a bottle of rotgut whiskey on the table that was still maybe a quarter full and didn’t seem to have any cigarette butts or blood floating in it. Leia pulled it over to herself, wiped the rim of the bottle thoroughly with her sleeve, before bringing it to her mouth and taking a healthy swig. It was, unsurprisingly, absolutely foul. It burned long after it should have done and the musty taste on top of her already sensitive stomach made her swallow compulsively a few times to avoid bringing it back up, along with everything she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours. It probably hadn’t been her best idea, but she knew what she was about to say to Luke, the offer she was about to make, was going to go down like a lead balloon. She’d already had it out with Han over the particulars this morning, she wanted the false confidence that the liquor would provide. Luke regarded her warily, unwilling to offer anything more up about his own condition before she’d answered him.

“We were in the system anyway. Chen sent a wave last night, said you’d had a mite too much to drink and that you weren’t exactly making friends.” Leia kept her expression placid, and there was no judgement in her voice. Looking at Luke though, she could see by the tight clench of his jaw, that he was already unhappy with her reasoning. “He reckoned that you might’ve been making enemies of some pretty dangerous folk. Figured that I oughta know in case you needed back up.”

“I don’t need you here-”

“Which is exactly what I told Chen.”

“Well good, because he had no right to-”

“But then I got to thinking, well it has been a long gorram time since I saw my dear brother and who knows when we’ll be in the same system again.” Leia knew that Luke was well versed in what she was doing here; steamrollering him so that he couldn’t raise what were likely to be his reasonable objections. She’d done it to him plenty in the past and yet somehow, he’d never worked out a way to stop her. “Or…”

“Or what, Leia? I don’t have time for this.” She could see a muscle in his clenched jaw twitching and knew that he was reaching the end of a tether undoubtedly shortened by the killer hangover that was kicking in right about now.  
“Seems to me like you ain’t got nothing but time.” She sniffed. “Or if the next time I get a call, it’s because you’re dead. So I figured I may as well take the opportunity to see you now. Who knows if I’ll get the chance again.” Leia kept her eyes on Luke as she delivered the message, her tone cutting and lacking any of the earlier joviality.

“Seriously, Luke, what the hell were you thinking? You know better than to start kicking up a fuss on Unification Day. How is it that you always end up on the wrong side of a fight in an Alliance friendly town at this time of year, huh?” 

He had the good graces to drop his scowl and he wouldn’t look her in the eye. Leia knew exactly what Luke had been thinking because she’d had exactly the same impulses - a need to exorcise the bad energy and worse memories that always afflicted her this time of year. The only difference was that she was smart enough not to actually go out and do it.

Or maybe it wasn’t down to smarts. Maybe it came down to the fact that Leia had something other than frustration, loss and a sense of injustice to wake up for in the morning.

“You know the jumped-up purple bellies round here would use any excuse to make trouble. Especially with someone with your reputation,” Leia said with a sigh. “Is that what you wanted? To get arrested, or worse?”

“It ain’t like that Leia. It’s…” He trailed off, unable to find the words, and ended up shrugging instead. He momentarily looked impossibly tired to Leia’s eyes, and impossibly old. She knew the look. It was the one that she saw when she looked at her own face in the mirror most mornings.

She knew exactly what he meant, even if he couldn’t find the words for it. Even if it wasn’t an impulse that she still struggled with herself, Leia had found that she always knew how Luke was feeling, sometimes better than he did himself. 

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. Leia knew that pressing him further would only get his back up and make him defensive, which was the opposite of what she wanted. She gave him a good look over again and frowned. 

“You’re too thin,” she said, lips pursing without her consent. “You got work at the moment?”

_‘Do you have enough money to eat?’_ was what remained unspoken.

Luke shrugged again and avoided her eyes. “Sometimes. On and off. Did some work for Kes and Shara on Whitefall a month or so back.”

_‘No, and I don’t want to talk about it.’_

Well Luke was going to have to suck it up, because while Leia didn’t want to talk about it either, she knew they had to. She steeled herself, knowing that her proposal was going to go over poorly at best.

“You’re coming to stay on the ship with us. For now, anyway.” The way she phrased it left no room for interpretation, and no indication that it was a question at all.

“No. Thank you, but no,” Luke said, terse and half a second away from it being hissed out through clenched teeth.

“I don’t believe I said you had any choice in the matter, gē ge.” She drummed her fingers on the tabletop, voice blase and without inflection. “We could do with the help, and we have space for you-”

“I said no! I ain’t one of your crew,” Luke interrupted her, almost an inverse of their earlier conversation.

Unlike her brother though, Leia did not try and interject her way back in. She could see that Luke was working himself up into a temper. It was startlingly reminiscent of the way that Ben acted when he started having a tantrum. Of course, that kind of behaviour was more fitting on a six year old than it was on a thirty eight year old man. Leia could wait. Ben always tired himself out when he was having a snit, and he was much easier to deal with afterwards. She was hoping it would be the same with her brother.

She let him go on at length, though she mostly tuned him out so that she only picked up fragments of his ranting. She instead studied the grit underneath her fingernails and debated the merits of pouring herself another nip of the terrible whisky. Leia wondered idly when she’d gotten so adept at tuning men out. She suspected it was when she’d become a mother. Men, she found, were often indistinguishable from toddlers.

“Are you done?” Leia said, clipped and polite, as Luke seemed to trail off, running out of steam.

When she caught a glimpse of his face, she was surprised to see that it wasn’t flooded with anger, like she’d expected. Instead she could see hurt, and what she thought might be shame. Luke confirmed that for her before she could ever get the question out.

“I don’t need your pity, Leia, or your charity. I’m doing just fine.”

That stung. Leia had thought, given everything that they’d been through together, that he was better at reading her than that. That he thought she would ever be capable of pitying him, that the only reason she would want him in her life was out of some sort of sense of obligation or guilt? That hurt. 

“Luke, bui zui.” Her tone brooked no room for insubordination. Luke had opened his mouth to continue his disagreement, but one look at the tense expression on his face had it snapping shut and his eyes averted from her, staring into the murky depths of his own leftover drink.

“It ain’t about charity and certainly ain’t about gorram pity. Tā māde niǎo, Luke, I figured you knew me better than that by now,” she said, rubbing a hand over her forehead. The headache had come back and she wasn’t sure whether to attribute it to her hangover or how frustrating her brother could be at times. “It’s because I care about you, baichi, and I want you with me. If I ever made you think that wasn’t the case, then I ain’t been doing so good a job as a sister or a commander that I thought I was.”

“The war’s over, Leia. You ain’t my commander anymore, it’s not your job to look out for me anymore.” He’d gone straight past tired and into exhausted, like her admission had drained what little fight he had left right out of him.

“War might be over, but I ain’t suddenly stopped being your sister. It’ll always be my job to look after you.” That pulled the faintest embers of a smile out of him and Leia started to feel the stirrings that this might work, if she worded herself right. “And vice versa. Just ‘cause we ain’t fighting anymore, it doesn’t mean that I don’t need you at my six.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that, stunned momentarily into silence. Leia was pretty sure that he desperately wanted to agree, but couldn’t bring himself to swallow his pride and take the step, the same gorram reason he’d never asked for help before now. The world would be an easier place if the men in her life didn’t have quite so much frustrating and misplaced pride.

The tense silence was broken by the sound of one of the other patrons of the bar noisily vomiting at another table, and the loud and aggrieved sigh of the bartender. Luke let out a bark of laughter and Leia shook her head, but she was hiding a smile behind her hand. When the noise had faded, it felt like a little of the weight had been lifted.

“Suppose I can’t argue with that, can I?” Luke said, scrubbing a hand through his hair and grimacing at the greasy feel of it. His smile slipped a little and when he spoke again, that same creeping sound of shame was back in his voice. “Thing is though I don’t know if I’m that man anymore. I’m a mess, Leia. I ain’t the kind of person you’d want around, especially not near your kid. I’m about as far from a role model as it’s possible to be.”

“You’re a mess? Join the gorram club, pal.” Leia laughed, incredulous. “None of us are who we used to be anymore. The war saw to that for all of us. You really think that I just shrugged it off and put it behind me and got on with life? You think Han did? I can guarantee that we’re just as fucked up as you think you are.”

“But Ben…”

“I’d rather tell Ben that his uncle mightn’t always be okay all the time and might not be so fun sometimes than have to explain to him that his uncle’s dead and won’t be coming back,” Leia said, straight faced and serious. Luke looked stricken by her words and her tone, and seemed like he was about to say something in return, but Leia held her hand up to stop him from speaking before she got out what she had to say. “‘Cause that’s what I worry about, Luke. Every time I get a wave about you, I feel sick for a second because I think ‘this is it, this is the one where they tell me that he picked a fight with the wrong person, or got himself in too deep in some kind of trouble, or ate his own gorram gun’. And I know if I don’t step up for you, it’ll be when rather than if I get that call.”

She waited for the angry rejoinder, but it didn’t come. When she looked at her brother, Luke seemed to be stunned into silence. His shoulders were slumped and his eyes were suspiciously wet. He was wavering, Leia thought. If this didn’t work to convince him how much she needed him...well, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Club him around the back of the head, smuggle him out and hold him hostage aboard the Alderaan perhaps.

“Jesus, Leia, I ain’t never meant to make you feel like that…” Luke sniffed and cleared his throat. He looked at her and she thought that for the first time, he might be seeing that he wasn’t the only one that the war had left scars on, the kind that couldn’t be seen and festered in secret places. “I’m not...I don’t know much help I can be on your ship, but I guess I could stay a while. Until I get back on my feet again.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He never left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from the song 'guilt' by radical face, which is the BIG MOOD for this chapter. the gentlest of trigger/content warnings - cagey mentions of poor mental health/ptsd, poor self care/coping mechanisms, mentions of binge drinking.
> 
> thank you for the comments and kudos on this big vanity project guys, much appreciated.
> 
> poe's chapter is up next (which is about double the length of the first two put together oops), hopefully by the end of the week!


	3. summer skeletons - poe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia visits an old friend and acquires something unexpected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> translations for the spanish/chinese are at the bottom!

The heat hit Leia like a physical wall as the cargo bay doors descended. She would have said it was unreasonably hot, but Whitefall was unreasonably hot whether you were visiting in December or July. It was the kind of heat that stole your breath away - sticky and close and humid, the kind of heat that meant you could feel your back dripping with sweat almost seconds after leaving the climate controlled belly of the ship.

Despite the uncomfortable weather, it was a beautiful planet. Stepping out of the ship, she was struck by the lush greenery and the brightness of the wildflowers that seemed to grow literally everywhere. The town of Chula Vista looked strangely out of place - although calling it a town was generous. It was a collection of low white buildings and a few scattered ranches, surrounded on all sides by wild forests. It never failed to strike her how peaceful and picturesque the place was. She could understand why Kes and Shara had chosen here to settle down and build their life; though she was equally sure that somewhere like this would bore her to tears.

Leia only wished that she was here for a happier reason. She was slightly ashamed that it had taken her the best part of two years to come and see how Kes and Poe were doing after Shara had passed away. It had been partly because business had been booming over the past couple years and in her line of work, that was never guaranteed so it would have been insanity to turn it down. The other reason was that she had been grieving for her old friend herself, and she wasn’t sure that she had the room for other people’s pain on top of her own.

She left the ship with her son and her brother in tow. Han and Chewie would join them later after they’d managed to get in touch with Maz to arrange the sale of their last cargo. Luke had a ridiculous wide brimmed hat on that cast his face in shadow, but that he insisted was necessary. Ben looked particularly pale in the blinding sunlight, his short-clad legs practically glowing. She’d slathered him in sunscreen even though he’d complained the whole time - he was pallid enough that he’d start burning straight away and she’d rather deal with his irritation now than the inevitable whininess of a sunburned eleven year old.

The Dameron ranch was just as she remembered it - a sprawling ramshackle villa set back into the trees. There were chickens pecking at the dust in the front yard and a sandy brown dog was lazing in the shade of the porch. To the side of the house there was a collection of vehicles - both land and air - in various conditions of disarray, Shara’s battered old shuttle prominent at the front, still as bullet scarred and violently orange as Leia remembered it being.

Next to her, she could see Ben’s lip curl up in a sneer at the sight of the weather worn, faded blue paint on the villa and the dilapidated patched roof, and it made her frown. She hadn’t brought him up to be a snob, though she could see where he was coming from. They’d only just got back from spending two weeks at Lando’s estate on Boros, so this was quite the contrast.

As they made their way up the path, the ranch door opened and Kes walked up to meet them, sweeping her into a tight hug before clapping Luke on the shoulder and ruffling Ben’s hair. He took a step back and offered them a tired smile.

“Leia, Luke, it’s good to see you. It’s been too long.” His voice was as tired as his face, but there was genuine warmth there. “And this can’t possibly be Ben? You’re what, eleven now? You’re getting so tall, Poe will be jealous.”

Leia gave Kes a thorough look over. He was as compact and solid as she remembered him being, but there’d always been a fire in him that seemed diminished now somehow. He looked older than she’d expected him to, and he was pale and drained beneath his dark tan. She held onto him for just a second longer than was strictly necessary.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner. It’s been a hectic couple of years, but we should have at least made it to the funeral. How are you and Poe holding up?” Leia kept the waver out of her voice, but she could see just looking at Kes that he’d needed his friends around.

“You’ve nothing to apologise for, Leia, we understood why you couldn’t make it. Come on, sit down and we’ll catch up.” He waved off her apology, but Leia noticed that he frowned at the mention of his son’s name. “I told Poe to stick around the ranch today because you’d be coming, but the kid never listens. I’m sorry that you won’t have anyone to play with for a bit, Ben.” It was said with a resignation that indicated that Poe ignoring his instructions was a common occurrence.

Ben did not seem to care in the slightest, already caught up in tapping away at something on his Cortex pad and answering only with a shrug. They stepped over the threshold and into the house, Luke stopping briefly to scratch the dog behind the ears and sneak it a handful of something that he’d had secreted away in his pockets.

The house was only marginally cooler than it was outside, a ceiling fan slowly circling as it redistributed the same warm air. Whenever they’d visited the Dameron house before, it had felt like a home Untidy but lived in, and always full of noise and life, Shara and Poe’s natural exuberance barely constrained by Kes’s calmer nature. Today though the house was quiet and still and it was quickly clear how big of a hole the loss of Shara had left in the lives of her husband and her son. Though she was dead, her presence was everywhere; in the countless family pictures on the walls, in her battered jacket still hanging over the back of her chair (which was tactfully avoided when they came to sit down), in the way that her shoes were still lined up alongside Kes’s and Poe’s on the rack. It created a picture of loss so all encompassing that it was hard to look at and it made her heart ache.

They sat around the dining room table with tiny cups of very strong coffee and the little bite size custard tarts that Whitefall was known for, sweet enough to make your teeth hurt and too addictive to stop at just one. Ben took the seat in the corner, hunched over his Cortex tablet, face lit by the glow and scowling at how slowly it loaded due to the poor signal. Leia would have obviously preferred if he put it down and joined in the conversation, but she knew it wasn’t worth the sulking she would have to deal with if she made him put it away.

“How’s business, Kes? Noticed a few new shuttles in the yard…” Luke’s hands curled around his cup and he blew on the steaming liquid to cool it, head tilted in question.

“Uh huh. Got a job lot from a scrapyard on Georgia. Haven’t had chance to look them over properly yet, but I’d appreciate the second pair of eyes,” Kes said, earnest, but a little distracted, his eyes straying every now and again towards the clock. “I thought I’d fix one of them up with Poe, and then he could have it to learn in. Might keep him out of trouble for five minutes.”

“Possible but unlikely.” Luke laughed, clapping Kes on the shoulder with a sympathetic look. “You must remember being that age. Getting into trouble was basically the reason I woke up in the morning.”

Leia glanced over at Ben, sitting quietly in the corner and staring transfixed at whatever was occurring on his data pad. She wondered when his trouble making phase would start - he was barely a year younger than Poe, she thought, so she would have expected it by now. Maybe she’d been lucky. Ben was almost annoyingly well behaved. Her biggest concern was that he was too quiet. She worried that he felt lonely or isolated, growing up on the ship with no kids his own age for company.

As if the ‘Verse was listening, the four of them were startled by a sudden loud hammering on the door. Leia looked at Kes curiously, at the stiff set of his jaw and the sudden tension in his shoulders.

“Dameron! I know you’re home! We need to have words!” The voice from outside the door was trembling with barely restrained fury and Kes sighed as he stood and pulled it open.

“Alright, alright, Marik. I’m coming,” Kes said. Leia didn’t think she’d ever heard him sound so weary. “What’s he done this time?”

The middle aged man on the other side of the door was red in the face with anger, and one of his hands was curled tight around a small boy’s skinny bicep. Poe was clearly trying to hide himself behind the man and the tight grip that Marik had on him said that this was not his first escape attempt. The older man yanked Poe forward hard enough that he stumbled and shoved him towards his father, who caught him with a steadying hand on the shoulder. Poe rubbed at his arm with a mutinous look on his face and looked like he was about to say something, but thought better of it on catching his father’s thoroughly unamused expression.

Though Po ewas a year older than Ben he was at least a head shorter than her son, slight shouldered and narrow waisted. Poe clearly hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet. Maybe it would never come; Kes could best be described as ‘compact’ and Shara had been absolutely tiny. Poe took after Shara more strongly than he did Kes - she could see so much of her old friend in him that it was a little hard to look at him. She wondered briefly if his father ever felt that way. She could see Shara in his mop of wild curls, his even, swarthy tan, the shape of his mouth and the fire in his eyes, though the nose that was just a touch too big for his face was all Dameron genes.

“He’s broken my gorram window, that’s what he’s done, playing some fool game with rocks.” Marik scowled, and Poe opened his mouth to say something only to be stopped by a quick cuff around the back of the head from Kes. Marik had noticed it though and his eyes narrowed. “And the attitude on him! You need to get your boy in line, Dameron. He’s a menace.”

Kes shook his head and used one hand to push a protesting Poe inside the doorway. “Sorry, Marik. It won’t happen again.” The disbelief on Marik’s face said that he was fairly certain that it would happen again and it was more a question of when it would happen again as opposed to if. “I’ll pay for the window and I’ll talk to him about giving you lip.”

Kes shut the door on Marik as he was about to open his mouth again and rounded on his son. Poe took a half step backwards and looked unsure for a moment before his chin jerked upwards in a way that screamed insubordination. If Ben had looked at her like that she would have been furious. 

“¿Por qué no puedes simplemente comportarte?” Kes on the other hand was obviously used to that sort of disrespect from his son, because the look on his face was tired and the cadence of his voice was resigned rather than angry, like he didn’t have the energy to be furious anymore. 

“¡No hice nada malo! Fue un accidente.” Leia didn’t speak enough Spanish to really understand what was being said, but she could tell that the waver in Poe’s voice was more down to frustration than the havoc that puberty was undoubtedly playing with him. “Ese viejo imbécil lo tiene para mí. Por supuesto que le crees, solo soy tu hijo…”

“Incluso si fue un accidente, rompiste su ventana, Poe. Debes ser más cuidadoso, no puedo permitirme seguir arreglando tus errores.” Kes reached out for Poe’s shoulder and closed his eyes and sighed when Poe jerked away from him. Leia felt like she was observing something intensely personal and kept her eyes fixed on the cup in her hands, something that Luke seemed to be doing too. Ben had no such inclinations, however, and was practically sitting at the edge of his seat, finally interested in something outside of his Cortex pad. It was similar to the way that he always craned his neck to look back at shuttle crashes and it wasn’t a quality she liked in him.

“¡No sé por qué incluso trato de explicarlo! Nunca te pones de mi lado de todos modos.”***** Poe sounded like he was near tears, though they were of anger and frustration rather than sadness. His hands were balled into fists and his jaw was set, and he looked Kes directly in the eye before he spoke again. “Mamá me hubiera escuchado.”

Both of them froze at that, and bar the inhalation from Kes, the room was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop. Leia didn’t have to be fluent in Spanish to know what ‘Mamá’ meant. Kes’s face crumpled his shoulders sank as he shook his head. Poe looked for a second like he knew that he’d gone too far and regretted what he’d said, but he didn’t apologise. The teenager turned tail and fled back into the recesses of the house. Leia caught the tears tracking down his cheeks before he left. His stomped footsteps could be heard for a couple of moments before a door was slammed hard.

“Kes…” Leia took a step forward towards her old friend and reached out a hand to touch him on the shoulder as one choked and aborted noise came out from him. Kes shook his head and straightened up, swiping one hand over his eyes to brush away his own tears.

“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see us go at each other like that.” He took his seat back at the table and took a sip of his coffee to ground himself. When he looked back up, his face was calm, but it was a poorly applied mask and anyone who’d known Kes Dameron longer than a day could see how shaken and exhausted he looked. “That kid. We always seem to be on the wrong page with each other these days.”

“You’ve nothing to apologise for Kes. It’s understandable.” Luke lay his hand over Kes’s wrist and gave it a squeeze. Leia was happy to have him here; for all her brother’s...eccentricities, he’d always been better at this sort of thing than she had. “Losing Shara must have been hard on both of you, and Poe’s just a kid. It ain’t a surprise he’s acting out, but he shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I mean, I’m assuming.” He gave Kes a sheepish smile, hoping to lighten the mood. “I only ever learned to curse and order beers in Spanish.”

“If I remember rightly, your accent was always terrible too.” Kes laughed, but it had only worked a little as his face clouded again and he rubbed at his forehead like he had the beginnings of the mother of all headaches. “I’m reaching my wits end with him. I don’t know what more I can do. It’s like he hates me for still being here while his mom’s gone.” He sounded like it hurt to admit that.

“He doesn’t, Kes. He doesn’t hate you. He’s just heartbroken and sad and angry and he doesn’t know what to do with it, and you’re here as a convenient target,” Leia said. Though she couldn’t pretend she was privy to the inner workings of Poe’s mind, she thought that she could make a good guess at how he felt. She’d lost her own parents young and she could still remember feeling like things would never get better and raging against the injustice of it all. She hadn’t been a particularly pleasant person to be around for a good few years. 

“I know, but it’s hard to believe that when he’s screaming at me and throwing tantrums,” Kes said, looking towards the framed picture of himself, Shara and Poe on the wall, fingers flexing uselessly in and out of fists. “I’m reaching the end of my tether here. I don’t know what more I can do here. I know he loves me, but he sure as hell doesn’t like me right now. He don’t listen - nothing I say seems to gorram get through to him anymore, and he’s just getting worse.” Kes sighed and scrubbed a hand over his dry eyes. “I’m more worried than I am mad. If he keeps up like this, he’s gonna get himself into real trouble, the kind I can’t get him out of by throwing a handful of credits at the problem and grounding him for a couple days.”

Leia couldn’t imagine what it was like, losing someone so dear to you and seeing what you had left slipping away in front of you. For all of his faults, she was so grateful in that moment to have Han. No one prepared you for how difficult it was to raise a child, being solely responsible for this tiny life that mirrored all of your qualities, but was also imbued with all of your faults. Ben was a good kid, but she wasn’t sure how she would cope if she was suddenly thrown into looking after him alone. Heart aching, she reached out and took hold of Ben’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Ben looked up, a flash of confusion colouring his face, combined with irritation as her action caused him to mess up something in his game. He could clearly see something in her eyes though because he didn’t pull away, which surprised her. He was usually so prickly about hugs and affection and the like.

Kes poured them all another coffee, adding a jot of some sweet local spirit that burned on the way down to all of the cups except Ben’s. Luke did his best to get some small talk going, asking Kes about the makes and models of the ships in his yard and to an extent it worked. Kes’s eyes kept drifting to the firmly shut door down the corridor though, and he grew a little more subdued each time. Leia couldn’t help but follow his gaze too. The longer the conspicuous silence from Poe’s room went on, the heavier the mood in the room grew, until it became stifling. Leia put her coffee cup down and released Ben’s hand before she stood up.

“You want me to go talk to him, Kes?” she said, hoping that she wasn’t overstepping the mark. “Don’t know how much good I’ll do, but I’ve got an idea of how he’s feeling, and it might come better from someone new?”

To her relief, Kes looked grateful rather than indignant that she was sticking her nose in. He nodded, and some of the worry lines in his forehead eased.

“You don’t mind? I just don’t think I can face another screaming match, not for the moment anyway.” He frowned, worrying his lower lip with his teeth. “Although don’t be too surprised if he bites your head off.”

Leia waved him off and headed down the corridor. She rolled her eyes and shut the door to the lounge behind her when she noticed that Ben had shuffled to the edge of his seat and was peering after her, obviously expecting some kind of a show. She figured that Poe was probably already pretty embarrassed by his behaviour - she always had been when she’d played up at that age - and he wouldn’t appreciate an audience.

She couldn’t hear any noise from behind the bedroom door when she approached and she hesitated for a second, wondering whether it was a good idea to disturb Poe if he was sleeping. It only took remembering the crushed look on Kes’s face to convince her though. Leia knocked lightly on the door. 

“¡Vete! No quiero hablar contigo.” The wet sounding shout was paired with the noise of something heavy colliding with the door. While she didn’t understand the words, she figured that the meaning wasn’t hard to grasp.

“Poe? It’s me, Leia. It ain’t your dad,” she said, quiet and calm, the way she would if she was trying to gentle a spooked horse. “I wanted to come and have a little chat with you. Is that okay?”

There was a couple of moments of tentative silence before she heard the sound of someone shuffling across the room and the click of a door unlocking. Leia pulled the door opened and was greeted with the sight of a blotchy-faced Poe who was scrubbing at his eyes to erase any sign of tears and already moving to slump back onto his bed.

Leia stepped inside the room and closed the door after herself. She settled herself in the little wooden chair that was next to a desk, for once grateful that her petite frame meant that she didn’t worry about breaking the rickety thing. She looked around the room disinterestedly, giving Poe a couple of minutes to compose himself. It wasn’t too out of the ordinary for a small boy’s bedroom, though Ben’s had rather fewer model spaceships and old war comics than this one did. A flash of colour on the wall caught her eye and Leia smiled sadly as she recognized the bright but worn fabric as the banner of the 82nd Squadron, Shara’s old faction and one of the squadrons that had been under Leia’s command. She hadn’t expected that bittersweet reminder today, but she forced herself to tear her eyes away and not get caught up in her own head.

Poe was curled up on his side with his back to Leia, gazing forlornly out of the window. She could see his shoulders trembling slightly and the mother in her yearned to tuck the blanket around him and tell him that everything would be okay. She suspected that wasn’t what he needed right now though.

“You doing okay, kiddo? Seems like you’ve had kind of a rough day,” Leia said when it became clear that Poe was in no rush to talk himself.

He rolled onto his back and shrugged. One hand was curled into the fabric of his blanket and he threw the other arm over his eyes - mostly, Leia suspected, so that she couldn’t see how swollen and red they were.

“M’fine,” he mumbled reluctantly, as though it was some great hardship that he deigned to speak to her. “Not like you care anyway. Everyone cares about some stupid chuāngkǒu more’n me anyway.” 

Sulking then. That was fine, Leia could deal with sulking. She was practically a master in deciphering it. While Ben was a well behaved child for the most part and didn’t get into the kind of trouble that Poe seemed to be talented at, he was a bonafide expert in sulking.

“Now you know that ain’t true. Your dad was just worried. You could’ve gotten hurt, or your neighbour could’ve called the authorities rather than just bringing you home,” she said, trying not to sound like she was chiding him. “You know that you’ve got people that care about you, it’s just easier for you to feel like you don’t right now.”

Leia could feel him rolling his eyes without needing to see them, and his lips held a faint scowl. “If that’s true, how come you ain’t come to see us for over a year? You don’t care that much,” Poe said, and there was real hurt in his wavering voice, even though he was trying to posture past it.

Leia opened her mouth to answer but closed it again before speaking. The excuses about how busy they’d been with the business were on the tip of her tongue, but the problem was that she knew that’s exactly what they were; excuses. They’d made the trip up to Whitefall at least every couple of months before Shara had died. It wasn’t a coincidence that the eighteen month gap had come after she passed. She looked at Poe trying to hide his upset and made her decision - though he was young, Leia had never believed in the idea that you should talk down to kids, or tell little white lies to keep them happy.

“I know I should have come sooner and I’m sorry,” she said. “We have been busy, but that doesn’t excuse it. Mostly, I was hurting over your mom too. She was very dear to me. I wanted to be selfish and be sad for myself first.”

Poe was regarding her with some interest, curiosity overtaking his need to sulk. She suspected he was surprised that she hadn’t tried to sugarcoat her reasons or make excuses for herself. After her parents had passed, she’d always hated it when people did that, almost as much as she hated it when they treated her with kid gloves on. He sat up so that he could face her properly, kicking his legs back and forth lazily where they dangled off the edge of his bed. Leia gave him a smile and received a tentative one in return.

“You know, I was only a couple of years older than you when I lost my mom and dad,” Leia said lightly, reaching forward to put a hand on his knee. “So maybe I can understand how you’re feeling a little better than others. If you want to talk about anything, I’ll listen. You don’t have to pretend that you’re fine if you’re not with me, Poe.”

Poe’s fingers picked anxiously as a loose thread in his trousers, and she caught the wary look in his big dark eyes. He chewed his lower lip (obviously a terrible habit that he’d picked up from his father), shifting a little in his seat as he weighed up his words.

“When…” He trailed off, voice small and unsure. Leia frowned, because this was a kid she’d never seen be unsure once in his gorram life to this point. 

Swallowing, he looked up at her and started again.

“When does it stop hurting?”

Leia closed her eyes for a second and just breathed in and out. It took restraint that she didn’t know she had not to give the kid a hug. Instead, she gestured to the empty space next to him on the bed, and when he nodded, moved over to sit next to him, one arm slipping around his bony shoulders. He was a barely-there weight against her side, but she could feel some of the tension drain out of him straight away.

“I don’t think it ever stops hurting, bǎobèi. Not completely anyway.” Leia tightened the arm that she had around Poe’s shoulders as she heard a little sniff come out of him at her words, obviously not the answer that he’d been wanting. “But you find ways to cope with it, and it hurts a little less every day. At least it did for me.” She put a hand on the back of his head and ruffled his curls. “So you’ll ooof-”

The wind was knocked out of Leia momentarily as Poe threw his arms around her middle and tucked his head into her shoulder, crying quietly. Leia froze for a second, unsure exactly what to do; Ben had never been a particularly emotional or affectionate kid and he was pretty much the beginning and end of her experience with children. After a moment though, her instincts took over. She kept a warm hand at the back of Poe’s neck between his shoulders and hummed soothing nonsense words. She suspected this was something that had been building up for a while: it was easier with her than heaping more grief and worry on his equally suffering dad.

Poe calmed fairly quickly, the gentle sobs easing into wet, shaky breathing. Leia grimaced as he surreptitiously wiped his wet eyes and runny nose against her shoulder, though didn’t say anything aloud to him. Once he pulled away from her, he looked embarrassed by his behaviour, giving her a sheepish look and shuffling a little further along the bed. Leia didn’t give him the chance to feel ashamed for showing some emotion; she squeezed his shoulder and smiled kindly at him.

“M’sorry.” He sniffed, refusing to meet her eyes. “Didn’t mean to get you all empapado, crying on you like a baby.”

“Oh, Poe, bui zui,” she said affectionately, bumping him with her shoulder. “You ain’t got nothing to apologise for. I’ve had bigger, older men and women than you cry on my shoulder, for lesser reasons. I’d say you’re entitled to a good old cry now and again.”

That got her a wet chuckle out of him, as he wiped at his damp and snotty face with the sleeve of his shirt in a way. Leia wrinkled her nose in distaste, and that had him laughing again, rolling his eyes at her perceived prudishness. Once he’d composed himself, she gave Poe a shake on the shoulder, trying to school her face into something a little sterner. It was probably an absolute failure considering how soft hearted and impossibly fond of the kid she felt right now.

“You gotta start going easier on your dad though, kiddo. You ain’t the only one who misses your mom, and he’s trying his hardest.” She could almost feel that she was getting Poe’s hackles up as she spoke, and she held her hands up in a placating manner. “All I’m saying is that you really upset him back there. He’s scared you’re gonna get yourself hurt or in trouble. He’s already lost your mom, he couldn’t cope with losing you too.”

“That ain’t true. He’d be happier if I gone, he don’t want me here anyway.” Poe brought his legs up onto the bed, knees tucked up under his chin, and wrapped his arms around them. The scowl was back on his face and his voice was churlish.

“Now I know that’s not true! Your dad loves you, Poe, it would kill him if you weren’t around.” She restrained the urge to shake him by the back of the neck like a disobedient puppy.

“Oh yeah, if he loves me so much then why does he wanna send me away?” 

That stunned Leia into silence, mouth hanging half open like a fish on a line in surprise. It was the last thing that she’d expected to hear. When she looked at Poe, she could see that he was trembling with restrained emotion. He obviously hadn’t meant to shout that at her, and his mouth was clamped shut, jaw set mulishly. His fingers were clenched so tight on his arms that they were leaving white pressure marks on tanned skin.

Leia put her hands over his and gently prised them away from his arms. When she let go, they dangled limply at his sides. Poe was clearly trying very hard not to start crying again. The certainty that had been in his voice when he had told her that his own father didn’t want him concerned her. It couldn’t possibly be true - the upset and worry on Kes’s face couldn’t have been faked - but Poe had to have gotten this into his head in somehow, and that was bad enough.

“Poe…” she said gently, as he studiously refused to look at her. “Why do you think your dad wants to send you away? Where did that come from, huh?”

“I heard him say it.” He sniffed, voice wobbly. “He was on a Wave with my abuela. Said he was at the end of his tether with me and asked if I could go stay with her for a bit…"

Leia winced. That must have been the last conversation that Kes would have wanted his son to overhear. Ta ma duh, no wonder the kid was volatile at the moment - thinking that he wasn’t wanted by his father so soon after losing his mother would have messed with anyone’s head, never mind a fragile twelve year old boy. She suspected that Kes had never intended it to be taken to heart in this way; she knew him well enough to know that Kes would rather cut off his own hand than send Poe away.

Something had to give though. The longer this went on, the more their relationship would degrade. Both of them grieving, raw and sore like a cracked and infected tooth, it was only a matter of time before one of them said or did something that they couldn’t take back. Oh no, she thought, as the idea took root in her brain, Han isn’t going to like this at all.

“Poe, I know and you know that your dad didn’t mean it like that.” She ruffled his hair again and he swallowed, shoulders shifting uneasily into a shrug.

He was too much like Shara, she’d been right with her first thought. For all that Kes would have wanted to fill the gap, he wasn’t enough. Not right now. He couldn’t plug the hole that losing a bond like that had caused in Poe, and seeing him must remind Kes of what he lost.

“It might not be so much of a bad idea though, you know? Taking a little break from each other.” The look that Poe turned on her at that was one of utter betrayal, and she hastily explained herself so she didn’t have to see that devastation anymore. “You get some space and it’ll make all this fighting seem as dumb as it actually is.”

He was wavering. If he worried his lip with his teeth much more then he’d end up breaking the skin.

“You think?” he said warily, defeated.

“I think. Look.” She paused and sighed. She’d apologise to Han later. Easier to ask forgiveness than seek permission. “How about this - I’ve got a proposition for you…”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Leia returned to the Alderaan with the custody of two small boys, as opposed to the one she had started the day with, Han was, to her total lack of surprise, furious. She understood his anger; if he’d come home with a stray cat and told her that it was staying on board without actually asking her first, she’d be apoplectic, never mind a child. 

Both of her hands were occupied by holding on to a smaller one, so she managed to convey the message of ‘don’t start shouting about it here and now’ to her husband via a pointed look and the advantage of a silent language curated over many years. For a moment it seemed like he was going to do it anyway, but he caught the look of wary nervousness on Poe’s face, and the eager curiosity on Ben’s, and sighed. 

“Luke, you wanna take the boys onto the ship and help Poe get settled?” Han said through gritted teeth. “Me and Leia need to have a few words.”

In a move that was only going to irritate Han further, Luke looked to her for confirmation before he made any move to do so. It was only once she’d given him a tight nod that he beckoned the children forwards.

“Come on then, kiddos,” he said.

Before the words had even finished coming out of his mouth Ben was halfway back towards the ship without so much as a goodbye, eager to get out of the sun and back within range of a decent Cortex signal. Poe was more reluctant, still hanging onto Leia’s hand with a clammy-tight grasp. Luke took pity on him and draped an arm around his shoulders, before steering him towards the ship.

“C’mon, let’s get your things put away, and then you can help me do the pre-flight checks.” For someone who claimed to be a grumpy old man with no time for children, her brother certainly softened around them.

“Really? That’d be shiny!” It was clearly the right thing to say because Poe brightened up straight away, residual nerves dissipating at the idea of getting to see the cockpit of a real spaceship as Luke steered him away.

Leia watched them leave and then sighed, before turning to face Han. 

“Wait, not here,” she said as he went to open his mouth, eyeing the muscle twitching in his clenched jaw. “I don’t want the boys to hear any shouting.”

She made the right decision, because there was a lot of shouting. Han had opened with, ‘So, you decided it wasn’t worth paying me the courtesy of asking me before you decided to adopt a new gorram kid’ and it went downhill from there.

She tried to stay civil and reasonable at first, but as so many of their arguments were wont to do, it wasn’t long before it devolved into petty snipes and sly digs. Her and Han, they were too similar. Too quick to anger, too eager to get the last word in. It was why their relationship was so passionate, but it was also why any argument between them was as deadly as any battlefield that she’d seen in the war. She was as likely to step on a landmine as she was to find any kind of safety.

“You’re the one who said that Ben was too isolated and needed friends his own age!” she said, twenty minutes into their row, ready to tear her hair out in exasperation. “So why the hell are you so angry at me for finding a solution?!”

“It’s the principle of the thing, Leia! You just went ahead and did it for both of us, without even thinking about seeing how I felt! You can’t just bring people into our home without us having a conversation first.” He was pacing back and forth as he spoke, practically wearing a hole into the dirt floor. “The hell makes you think you’ve got the right to make decisions for me?”

“It’s my gāisǐ ship, so I get to decide who’s aboard it. When you’ve got Captain in front of your name, you can make the gorram decisions.” Leia regretted how she’d phrased it as soon as the words started leaving her mouth, but the sentiment was true.

They both froze. Han looked wounded and furious in the way that she knew meant they’d be in separate beds for a couple days. Leia didn’t take it back though. After a moment or two, Han realised that she wasn’t going to apologise or rescind it, and his face darkened. He muttered an incredibly inventive string of curse words under his breath before throwing his hands into the air and stalking in the opposite direction. He threw his last comeback to her over his shoulder.

“Aye aye, _Captain_. Mark my words though, this is all gonna end in tears.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He was right of course. But no matter how spectacularly her decision had backfired, and the hurt that it caused, and the rifts that it deepened, no matter all of that, bringing Poe Dameron onto her ship was a decision that Leia never regretted. Not even for a second.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one ended up long! i'm an unashamed poe girl, so it was inevitable really. rey's up next, and i'm fairly sure that one's gonna end up even longer!
> 
> ¿Por qué no puedes simplemente comportarte? - Why can't you just behave?  
¡No hice nada malo! Fue un accidente. - It wasn’t my fault, it was an accident!  
Ese viejo imbécil lo tiene para mí. Por supuesto que le crees, solo soy tu hijo… - That old fool has it for me. Of course you believe him, I'm just your son...  
Incluso si fue un accidente, rompiste su ventana, Poe. Debes ser más cuidadoso, no puedo permitirme seguir arreglando tus errores. - Even if it was an accident, you broke his window, Poe. You’ve got to be more careful, I can’t afford to keep fixing your mistakes.  
¡No sé por qué incluso trato de explicarlo! Nunca te pones de mi lado de todos modos. - I don't know why I even try to explain it! You never get on my side anyway.   
Mamá me hubiera escuchado – Mom would have listened to me  
¡Vete! No quiero hablar contigo. – Go away! I don’t want to talk to you  
Chuāngkǒu – window  
Bǎobèi – Sweetheart  
Bui zui – Be quiet/shut up  
Gāisǐ - Goddamn


End file.
